The book is not a history of Kazakhstan or a biography or memoir, as her husband’s books have been. Instead Philosophy of Love presents her methods of self-awareness and recognition. No one seems to be reporting on the details of what her philosophy of love is or what she means by self-awareness. However, for 7 years Pavoldar State Pedagological Institute, where the book was presented, has taught “Self-Awareness”, a course designed by Nazarbayeva “aimed at spiritual and moral development of man, self-improvement and harmonious development of personality.” And as of last year, Self-Awareness has become a regular school subject.

According to the Ministry of Education website:

The moral and religious education and upbringing of the younger generation in Kazakhstan society focused on the harmonious synthesis of human, national, ethnic, cultural and personal values, they pozvolyut person to fully realize ourselves in service to society, to realize their role and purpose in life.
Self, increasing value-meaning education, reveals and develops the individual’s ability to love unselfishly, to believe in themselves and in their strength, to do good, to learn more and improve itself, to achieve harmony in the physical, mental, spiritual, social and creative development.

The official site of Nazarbayeva’s center, Bobek, has a Self-Knowledge Section with some sample lessons. It sounds very touchy-feely and pretty harmless. However, some of the aspects, like the teacher chanting Zen-like poetry while students stand in a circle, sounds suspiciously like the kinds of things that make the government nervous when they happen in Protestant churches. And much of it seems aimed less at having students explore issues of self, love, nature, and the soul and more at teaching them the “correct” view.

Has anyone gone through this program? What do you think about it?

As students are studying their exam tables and practice books, they got some bad news:
The tests will be harder [RU]. More questions will added to the humanitarian subject tests But the minimum score necessary to be admissible to university, 50 out of 120 points will not change. Nor will the format, multiple choice, despite calls from parents, teachers and students to change to a less structured format that better tests knowledge.

Furthermore, security will be enhanced [RU] including on-duty police at test sites, metal detectors, and cell-phone jammers.

Sounds like even more fun for high school graduates this year.

We would like 100% of those who will start learning Kazakh language in the first class to be able to speak Kazakh. I am sure this will happen,” Nazarbayev said at a meeting of the Assembly of People of Kazakhstan.
He emphasized that over 80 percent of the residents of the country should be able to speak the national language by 2017.
“The knowledge of Kazakh language is not just a sound bite, it means that the people will also know the history of our country, the history of the Kazakh people…This will help consolidate the people of Kazakhstan and boost mutual confidence day after day.

At the same time he acknowledged some of the issues of going too fast, citing the problem of clinics and hospitals where signs are all in Kazakh, making it impossible for non-Kazakh speakers to find doctors and treatment rooms:

People come to a new clinic. And there all the signs in the doctors’ offices are in the Kazakh language only – from overenthusiastic officials from the Ministry of Health. So patients walk around as if in a labyrinth and don’t know how to get to the right doctor

He acknowledged that the goal of increasing the percent of the population that speaks Kazakh was better served by educating the young generation, rather than taxing the older generation with learning or relearing a new language. This seems like a reasonable approach to avoid alienating Russians, Ukrainians and other ethnicities who have lived their whole lives in Kazakhstan, while at the same time promoting the state language.

One area that I think has a lot of potential is using smartphones in the classroom. A lot of teachers have smartphones, whether they know it or not. iPhones and Android or Windows phones are expensive here, although very popular, but Nokia dominates the market and a lot of people don’t realize that their $200-300 Nokia phone has tons of functionality. You can go paperless by putting lesson plans and readings on the phone. There’s options to record voice and video, or assign students to record themselves at home. And I’ve been looking into some optoma projectors that will let you project images from your phone to the screen. You don’t need a computer in class at all.

Any other good implementations of technology in the classrooms here?

Other ways of getting an MBA from a Western university include an online business degree from accredited schools and someday perhaps, attending our very own Nazarbayev University. Of course some who go the online business degree route, forget to make sure that the school is accredited and reputable and not just a diploma mill. Not that international students going to bricks and mortar universities aren’t also taken in by schools like Oxford Brooks, not quite as reputable as Oxford University.

I then failed to post about member of Parliament in Kazakhstan, Bekbolat Tleukhan’s reaction to the attack, mainly that he blames Sascha Baron Cohen because “our students abroad are hurting in their heart,” and believes that some kind of action against Borat should be taken. Many people noted that since the movie came out 5 years ago, it’s a bit late. Incidentally, within Kazakhstan Tleukhan is most famous for allegedly having four wives as per Muslim law. But that’s all just rumours.

Now, Tleukhan wants the education system of Kazakhstan to decide who is right, Darwin or religion. Classes in religion have recently been added to the Kazakhstan school curriculum and although many observers feel these classes are designed to keep students from becoming extremists, according to Tleukhan, they are confusing students who learn in religion class that man is created and then learn in biology that man is a product of evolution: “Let decide once and for all, are we descended from monkeys or made from clay. We either get rid of religious educations or abandon the teachings of Darwin.”

He has asked the Minister of Education to resolve the ages-old contentious debate once and for all. Personally, I am looking forward to hearing the answer from the Minister of Education. I assume if he choses evolution, everyone in the world will finally abandon religion and become scientists. If he choses religion, then we can give up on all secular education. One hopes that someone in the government will then solve the problem of which religion is the one true religion so we can get on with our lives.

The Eurasianet article lists a few of Tleukhan’s other contributions to the education debate such as why notebooks that students use in school have pictures of guns or Dima Bilan on them, and a call to ban a Russian literature book because some of the literary works propagate Christianity and paganism.

Kazakhnomad has some of her notes up and it’s worth going through. I think the admissions that Kazakhstan is behind in the areas of education, innovation and scientific research are notable. I do think the general “pick-the-winner” strategy that Kazakhstan tries to follow in innovation, which the President hinted at in referring to the need for more practical science, is misguided. One never knows where the next practical breakthrough will come from so -you need basic research as well as commercial-minded research. But overall it’s nice to hear some criticism of Kazakhstan coming from up to.

Also, as someone involved in education in Kazakhstan, I was happy to hear reference to people learning problem-solving skills. I don’t know if it’s the Soviet-inherited mentality or Kazakh culture, but planning for the worst and having a back-up plan are not generally part of people’s or organizations’ skill sets here.

One of the big problems I was loath to face was the situation at college, where petty and possessive administrators wield the iron fist (minus the velvet glove) to keep teachers in the office from 9 to 5, no matter their lesson schedule. It’s resented by local teachers who are actually paid by the college, but it’s been especially hard for me, since last year I wanted to do projects in other community institutions and was constantly getting myself or my fellow teachers in trouble for it.

Then, apparently, the Education Minister cut our lesson hours, reducing my schedule to between 2 and 6 teaching hours a week. I started ignoring the administration and going to teach at different local schools until the college director found out and… the shit hit the fan. People started getting yelled at and threatened, in the all-too-familiar Soviet manner, and I was summoned to her office to explain myself.

Only in a place like this, where ingrained clannish greed too often rears its ugly head, would I have to explain why I’d prefer to fill my days with useful activities rather than obediently drinking tea in the teachers’ room. Last year I respected and was even a little intimidated by the director, but this year I see her clearly for the narrow-minded fist-clencher that she is.

There’s some possibly unjustified nastiness toward the Soviet system and tribalism, but the at the heart of the matter is the problem that school teachers are too often treated like members of an office staff. And their loyalty to the “company” is more important than their being able to be productive. I myself have seen teachers arrive at school to be told that their regular students are on a field trip and they should teach a completely different group of students. Or that they must be at school from 9-7, but they shouldn’t let students distract them because they need to be on-call in case the director or Minister officials want to talk to them. Of course, as I’ve mentioned before, teachers often don’t get paid much here so they need to work several jobs just to make ends meet.

In general, unfortunately one major issue here is still that the work of a teacher is not appreciated. It’s more than just following a textbook or giving a lecture or giving students a worksheet and correcting their errors. Teachers need to be engaged with students, they need time to prepare lessons and reflect on and evaluate past lessons, and they need time to read and learn from each other and take courses to become better teachers. They also need time to meet with students individually and deal with disciplinary issues. Time spent in a classroom is probably 30-50% of the time teachers spend working. Teaching is not like fixing pipes where you can just show up, do the job, and go home. It’s also not like you can be on call all the time to report to your superiors. What can they report? “Today we studied the Periodic Table. All of them understood atomic mass but they still don’t remember all the symbols. We will drill them tomorrow.”

Of course, teachers need to be accountable to students and the school and occasionally the director will need to meet with them to discuss issues. Monitoring by the Ministry or the local government is also needed. But in my opinion, imposing a regular work schedule is not the solution.

The special status will allow these foreign schools to set their own curricula. Though I can’t find an article that spells out the exact nature of the status, university students in Kazakhstan are typically expected to take mandatory classes in Military Training, Kazakh Language, Kazakh History, Law and Society, and Ethics regardless of their major. So this is a big step forward for Kazakhstan in giving a school freedom from the Ministry-of-Education-set curriculum and what some might call the patriotization and socialization aspects of most education in Kazakhstan.

The article from the Central Asia Newswire also quotes an anonymous source on the sensitive issue of whether the president of Nazarbayev University should be a Westerner or a Kazakhstani. Worth reading and thinking about.